1. Field of the Disclosure
This disclosure pertains in general to computer hardware simulation modeling, and more specifically to simulation modeling frameworks for configurability of controller designs (e.g. memory controller designs) of a target system.
2. Description of the Related Art
With the advancement of computer systems and their applications, processing power and computing speed has increased substantially. At the same time, the complexity and number of components included in various computer hardware components has also increased. This increase in complexity of modern computer systems has led to new techniques for system design and modeling that enable faster, less error-prone, and more user-friendly design configurability. System designers frequently need to create and simulate computer system designs that meet the rapidly changing performance and power requirements, in a shorter time span to meet the demands of the competitive market. The reduced time to market and the increased complexity of computer system components has led to the adoption of simulation techniques that allow designers to rapidly generate models of their target computer systems and analyze the performance of these models before such models are actually implemented in silicon. The adoption of these modeling and simulation approaches and tools has spun off a field known as early stage architectural exploration that allows designers to explore a variety of system architectures before selecting a desired architecture for their system design.
But despite the benefits of model creation approaches and tools to early stage architectural exploration and efficient system design, model creation can itself be tedious and time consuming. The need for efficient and cost-effective early simulation and architectural exploration has created a corresponding need for readily configurable models for various system components so as to give users and designers the capability to modify model behavior for exploration purposes. But at the same time, model simulation for performance and power validation should be sufficiently accurate.
For complex computer system components like controllers (e.g., memory controllers) and associated parts interconnected by the controllers (e.g., on the system on chip (SoC) and system memory side), it is beneficial to enable design and development of a configurable system level model that allows a designer to characterize and validate the behavior of the controller or subcomponents thereof before implementation in silicon.